WINGS OVER HOUSTON AIR SHOW

Today we are getting out and doing something fun and different, something we haven't been to in a long time.  Today, as this posts, we will be at the Wings Over Houston Air Show.  It's an annual air show.  They have planes on display to walk around and get inside of.  Of course they have all sorts of flying planes and aerobatics and war reenactments.  Oh and this year they are going to have the Blue Angels for the first time in a few years so that will be fun. 

We splurged and got the super duper tickets.  We have reserved seats, breakfast lunch and afternoon snacks, private entrance, up front parking, our own bathrooms, open bar with free drinks of all types, and we each get a cap, program and poster.

It will be an all day event, fingers crossed for good weather because if it rains we don't get a refund.  

Pics in a future update.  Tomorrow should be the farm but we'll see how tired we are and how the weather is.  We are supposed to have a lot of rain early next week and it could start Sunday.

FRIDAY FUNNY

OK, fess up, how many of you experience something like this?  As a teen/young adult of the 80's, my brain knows the lyrics of, oh, 1,765 songs or somewhere thereabouts.  I can sing along with every single top ten single of the 80's...but the other day at work we were talking about dinner and someone asked what we had last Friday.  Um.  I couldn't remember.  

So 80's, 70's, 60's songs filling your head vs what you needed in the kitchen, a meal from a week ago, a name, it's all the same I guess.  Maybe our brains have a limited capacity and I filled mine up with too many songs?  HA!

Enjoy your day!

WISHING WELL INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Every Thursday we like to post a picture of something we've found online that inspires us to do something similar at the farm. Sort of our own blog bulletin board so that we can eventually look back and someday, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

Wishing well herb garden, image via Pinerest.com

OK, so this one is silly but still kind of fun.  Someone took a barrel, painted it, put a roof over the top of it and made it a wishing well.  Actually, with the herbs (looks like rosemary mostly) growing around it, it becomes kind of a neat way to have a focal point that is both cute to look at and be productive as well.

Be inspired!

FALL GARDEN TO DO OR NOT TO DO

Yesterday, I posted HERE about cleaning up the raised beds over the weekend and getting them ready for Winter sleep and/or planting.

We're still trying to decide if we want to do a Fall garden.  Of course I've missed the time for Fall tomatoes, peppers, etc, so I will have to plant things that like cold.  We might do a bed of collards, we love those, and a couple of years ago, we had success with Napa cabbage.

That being said, there WILL be planting for sure.  This box came a couple weeks ago.

What is it?

Lorz Italian seed garlic

OUR GARLIC!  Woo-hoo!  We ordered from the same place we did last year, Great Northern Garlic.  By the way, we don't get anything in return for you clicking.  We just wanted to provide the link.  You have to order earlier in the season to be guaranteed to get some (they are already sold out for this season).

This time we ordered enough to plant TWO beds of garlic.  Since we had good luck this Spring with the garlic we planted last Fall, we decided to double our yield.  We might be swimming in garlic next Spring but there could be worse things right?  

This bag of seed garlic is the same variety we grew this year.  Don't mess with a sure thing, ha.  It's currently in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator getting "chilled" so we can trick it into thinking it's Winter.  It will get a head start on doing what it does best.  We did this last season and it worked great for us.  Last year we planted the garlic on November 7th. We're aiming for the first weekend in November this year as well.  

So at least there will be planting, just not sure of the extent of the rest of the garden.  I feel like I need a break from bigger Fall gardening but then I feel like I'm missing out if there's not at least something else growing that we can harvest.

We'll see!

RAISED BED CLEARING AND PREPPING

Well this weekend was time to clean up the garden.  I had pulled up all the spent plants weeks ago.  I should have done all the rest of this already but it's just been so hot and my time has been limited by other obligations, I just didn't get to it.

With cooler(ish) weather, this weekend was time.

All the beds looked like this.  Plants gone but the straw mulch was still there and, though I had already done it when I took this picture, some random weeds and grass in every bed too.

The first thing I did was pull up all the weeds and then I raked up the straw and disposed of it.  I put it in my garden cart and took it to a wooded area and scattered it around.  Waste not!  

Next I broke up the old soil and added a small bag of compost and a large bag of raised bed blend soil.

4 x 4 raised bed

Then I just mixed it all up with a shovel and smoothed it out.

4 x 8 raised bed

Here's the long raised bed after I did it.  I left the chives in the middle because they are perennials and the row will make a nice way to separate the areas for future plantings.

Raised garden beds end of Summer

Here's another shot.  The back four beds before I had raked up all the straw mulch.

Raised garden beds

And after...all cleaned and freshened up with new soil.  We're hoping the wind will blow away all the straw that blew out onto the ground, ha.

They are ready for planting and/or closing up for Winter.  More on that tomorrow.

OFF TO THE FARM TODAY

Today it's off to the farm.  We have cooler weather, though not as cool as I'd hoped and there's a chance of rain.  But much cooler weather is coming.  I am hoping I don't have to mow or edge and in fact, I might just skip it even if I do have to.  

It's going to be really cool next week so the growing should slow down.  My goal today is to get the garden ready for planting or sleep.  Or combination of both.  More on that later.  I'll be stopping at the garden center on the way for soil and compost and maybe a plant or two.

Hope your weekend is off to a good start!

BALL SPIRAL JARS DEAL

A grocery store near my office is remodeling.  They are constantly putting stuff on clearance because I guess they are making space for new/more stuff.

So the other day I found these:

Spiral Jars from Ball Canning

Two cases (though only four each) of the new(ish) widemouth spiral canning jars.

We guess this is something new this year.  Not sure if it's going to stick around but when I saw them and saw the price, it was too good a deal to pass up.

Ball Spiral Jars

That price?  They were originally marked down to $6.19 which would have been a not too bad deal in and of itself.  But these were ANOTHER 50% off of that price, so $3.09 for each set of four!

I'm not sure if there is anything special about having them shaped like this other than just being something different and more attractive than a regular jar but hey, for 77 cents each, we'll figure out something to do with them.

FLOWER CONTAINER GROUPINGS INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Every Thursday we like to post a picture of something we've found online that inspires us to do something similar at the farm. Sort of our own blog bulletin board so that we can eventually look back and someday, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

We recently got our second galvanized tub (haven't blogged about it yet though).  After the big one we found downstairs at the apartment a few months back, we realized we should start looking for ideas.  So we found these and like how they are used.

Put in groupings, of course they aren't anything you couldn't do with random clay pots of a various sizes, but there is just something appealing (to us anyway) of the way they looked when grouped together like these are.

They are so pretty with flowers of varying sizes and colors.  It makes for neat focal points somewhere in the yard where the makeup of the ground soil doesn't matter.

Be inspired! 

BLT SOMETIMES SIMPLE IS BEST

Dinner can sometimes be simple and simple is sometimes the best.  Case in point, the other night we got home from work, dug around in the fridge and something came together.

BLT ingredients

Hamburger buns, toasted.

A sliced tomato.

Some mixed greens.

And of course bacon. 

A little mayo (or Miracle Whip) slathered on the bread, stack everything up and voila...

BLT sandwich

A perfect BLT.

One of life's most special meals, ha.

Easy.  Simple.  Best.  

ALIEN WORLD OR JUST FLOWERS

I've taken these pictures over the last year.  I like extreme closeups because they look so unlike anything else.  Definitely something other worldly about them when seen like this.g

(remember, as with all photos on the blog, any will enlarge when you click on it)

Closeup of the flower buds on a Huisache tree...

Can't remember what plant this is but it definitely looks cool...

The center of a Passionflower...

Love this one.  So geometric and artificial looking while still being a living plant...

This one though has to be my favorite.  This is a weed (I think a thistle of some sort).  It looks like it will burst open and try to eat you at any moment.  Amazing how something in nature can look so amazing and foreboding at the same time...

ENJOY!

DUCKS GRASS AND MARGARITA KIND OF WEEKEND

2nd Man is in the middle of a big project at work and couldn't go out this weekend so I was on my own.

When I got to the farm, our driveway had the 7 growing baby ducks from 2nd Family pecking around in the grass.  They are too stinkin' cute! 

They let me get close enough to touch one of them and then they ran off.  And of course, where one goes, the others followed, and they soon left to go back "home" to 2nd Family.

Since it was sunny and clear, I was able to mow for the first time in a couple of weeks.  It was warmer than it should be in October but I was able to have my Zen time and that was a nice thing.

A nice day to get away from everything, the news, the world, some time on the porch was a necessity.  I made a tall glass of iced tea, kicked back in the rocking chair and just listened to birds chirping and the distant bark of a dog.  It was nice. 

When I got home, we had a nice dinner and yes, like the pitcher above say (we totally need to buy this by the way, ha) it was "a margarita kind of day" and we had two nice homemade ones.

How is your weekend going?